Main Organisers
ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability is a global network of more than 1,750 local and regional governments committed to sustainable urban development. Active in 100+ countries, we influence sustainability policy and drive local action for low emission, nature-based, equitable, resilient and circular development. Our Members and team of experts work together through peer exchange, partnerships and capacity building to create systemic change for urban sustainability.
The European Environment Agency (EEA) provides sound, independent information on the environment for those involved in developing, adopting, implementing and evaluating environmental policy, and the general public. In close collaboration with the European Environmental Information and Observation Network (Eionet) and its 33 member countries, the EEA gathers data and produces assessments on a wide range of topics related to the environment. The EEA supports urban adaptation through participation in the European Urban Resilience Forum, periodical publication of reports and by continuous development of local-level content on the Climate-ADAPT portal, including the Urban Adaptation Support Tool and Urban Adaptation Map Viewer.
Co-organisers
Athens is the historic capital of Europe; it is a city of myths and monuments, impulsive gods and ancient glory. Its long and exciting history reached its apex in the 5th century AD, when its values and culture extended beyond the city’s limits and became known and appreciated throughout the known world. The City of Athens offers a rich and multidimensional range of services and programmes for all the city’s residents. The Municipality’s work is flanked by municipal bodies and organisations which are supervised by the Municipal Council and are accountable to it. These are development companies or legal entities governed by public law. The activities of these bodies upgrade and enrich the daily life of Athenians and visitors.
REGREEN will substantially improve the evidence and tools for supporting co-creation of nature-based solutions (NBS) in urban settings, implementation of decision support systems for planning and governance, and development of business models for realising spatially relevant NBS, that provide multiple ecosystem services and wellbeing. REGREEN works through Urban Living Labs (ULLs) as the central elements of the project, where co-creation of knowledge involves local citizens, schools, businesses, organisations and public administrations enabling new forms of urban innovation.
The goals and vision of the REGILIENCE project are aligned with the targets of the Green Deal and Horizon Europe Mission “Adaptation to Climate Change”. The project comes at a time when vulnerable regions need support the most, to mitigate the climate change impacts and adapt for the future.
The Coastal Climate Core Service (CoCliCo) project aims at informing decision-making on coastal risk and adaptation, by delivering an open web-platform exploring dominant risk drivers, adjusting visualisation and analysis techniques to local decision contexts, and combining relevant and high-quality geospatial information layers. Through the platform, users will be able to visualize, download and analyse multiple decision-oriented coastal risk scenarios relevant to the rich user narratives of our Demonstration Case Studies, addressing the three needs raised above.
The aim of Klimaresiliente Infrastrukturen in Europa is to compile relevant knowledge on climate resilient infrastructures and to identify the most important scientific and policy institutions and practitioners in Europe on this topic. Relevant actors from science, practice and policy advising institutions from different disciplines are brought into exchange to develop and disseminate innovative research and implementation activities to increase climate resilience of infrastructures. Ultimately, small networks of actors will be established in this field.
Google's Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE) empowers thousands of cities and regions with actionable data and insights to reduce global emissions. Using exclusive data sources and modelling capabilities in a freely available platform, EIE helps cities and regions measure emission sources, run analyses, and identify strategies to reduce emissions - creating a foundation for effective action.
Supporters
The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the world’s largest multilateral lender and the biggest provider of climate finance. EIB provides financial support and knowledge for innovative projects, small businesses, infrastructure, and climate projects in order to foster sustainable growth development, and employment throughout Europe.
The Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy brings together thousands of local governments voluntarily committed to implementing EU climate and energy objectives on their territory. The initiative, supported by the European Commission, now counts 7500+ signatories who pledge to reduce CO2 emissions by at least 40% by 2030 and to adopt an integrated approach to tackling mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Signatories are benefiting from access to guidance and tools as well as from ways to network, exchange experiences and to build capacity through regular events and city twinning activities.
The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) is the voice of regions and cities in the European Union (EU). It represents local and regional authorities across the European Union and advises on new laws that have an impact on regions and cities (70% of all EU legislation). The CoR works to bring EU citizens closer to the EU. By involving regional and local representatives who are in daily contact with their electorate's concerns, but also by inviting citizens to participate in various events and debates, the CoR contributes to reducing the gap between the EU institutions' work and EU citizens.
RUGGEDISED is a smart city project funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. It brings together three lighthouse cities: Rotterdam, Glasgow and Umeå and three fellow cities: Brno, Gdansk and Parma to test, implement and accelerate the smart city model across Europe. Working in partnership with businesses and research centres these six cities will demonstrate how to combine ICT, e-mobility and energy solutions to design smart, resilient cities for all.
The Horizon2020-funded project EXCESS is realising 4 Positive Energy Building (PEB) pilots that incorporate renewable energy and smart technologies, and serve to advance the development of new materials, technologies and integrated technological systems. The pilots embrace a user-centric design approach and capitalise on new ICT opportunities to optimise the interplay of local generation, storage, consumption at the building and district level, thus enhancing both sustainability performance as well as resilience. The demonstration activities in each of the climatic zones (Austria, Belgium, Finland and Spain) are accompanied by co-innovation, replication and exploitation activities to maximize the project impact and prepare for a future market roll out of the PEB concept by also exploring energy efficiency funding opportunities.
ProGIreg uses nature for urban regeneration with and for citizens. The EU funded project implemets eight different nature-based solutionsto create productive green infrastructure that not only helps improve living conditions and reduce vulnerability to climate change, but also provides measurable economic benefits to citizens and entrepreneurs in post-industrial urban districts. Dortmund (Germany), Turin (Italy), Zagreb (Croatia) and Ningbo (China) host Living Labs in post-industrial districts where nature-based solutions are developed, tested and implemented. Cascais (Portugal), Cluj-Napoca (Romania), Piraeus (Greece) and Zenica (Bosnia and Herzegovina) closely follow the progress in the Living Labs and engage in city-to-city exchange to replicate the nature-based solutions.
ARCH is a European-funded research project that aims to better preserve areas of cultural heritage from hazards and risks. The ARCH team, which includes the cities of Bratislava, Camerino, Hamburg and Valencia, co-creates tools that will help cities save cultural heritage from the effects of climate change and other hazards. ARCH‘s expert interdisciplinary team also includes research scientists, the city network ICLEI and the standardisation organisation DIN. The main output of the ARCH project is a coherent, overarching and unified disaster risk management (DRM) framework for historic areas that takes climate change adaptation, heritage management, and social justice into account.
The LIFE programme is the only EU programme solely dedicated to the environment and climate action. Since 1992, LIFE has been continuously co-funding innovative projects to demonstrate the adaptive potential of green and blue infrastructure in local planning. More recently, the scope of LIFE projects co-funded has shifted to integrated, ecosystem-based solutions for whole districts or even whole cities, enabling the development of innovative adaptation technologies within the water, energy and construction sectors and increasing the focus on health-related issues. The programme is managed by the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) as of 1 April 2021. The new agency has a key role in supporting the European Green Deal.
Science for Environment Policy (SfEP) is a free news and information service published by the Directorate-General for Environment (DG ENV) of the European Commission. It is designed to help busy policymakers keep up-to-date with the latest environmental research findings needed to design, implement and regulate effective policies. The News Alerts are a cornerstone of the SfEP service. Presented in concise and easy-to-understand newsletter articles, SfEP offers quick access to scientific research on environmental issues. SfEP also releases regular Future Briefs on the latest environmental topics.
In partnership with
The Resilient Cities Network is a city-led organization that is driving urban resilience action to protect vulnerable communities from climate change and other physical, social and economic urban adversities and challenges. With support from The Rockefeller Foundation and other funding strategic partners, the Network aims to continue supporting cities and their Chief Resilience Officers in future-proofing their communities and critical infrastructure with a unique reach, strength and legacy to understand and support the challenges of the ever-growing urban society.
MCR2030 is built upon the success of the previous decade of advocacy work under the Making Cities Resilient (MCR) Campaign which was launched in 2010 and concluded at the end of 2020. The MCR Campaign, led by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and delivered with partners, achieved considerable success in promoting urban disaster resilience through local government authorities. It advocated the need to reduce risk and develop urban resilience through analysis and action plans, raised cities’ awareness and understanding of systemic issues and their connectedness, and through this process built local capacity and created or strengthened stakeholder partnerships.
